migration in concrete and experiential terms in which case the capital flight from the
South to the North and the subsequent labour flight can also be construed as a staging of
the battle of survival of the cities of the South against the capitalist cities of the North.
The uneasy interconnection between these cities is illustrated in London Letter and Other
Poems where the dystopian condition of the Nigerian city of Lagos can be blamed on the
internal dynamics of state negligence and administrative bungling. But the condition is
also partly blamed on the toll that external, western imperialist agenda of imposed
economic programmes of the 1970s and 80 especially have taken on the economy of the
city. The despoliation of the city thus provides the alibi for labour mobility to the city of
London, where it is hoped that an improved style of living will be guaranteed. However,
the facts of exclusion and “closures” negate this possibility. This is in addition to the
failures of the social and infrastructural systems which ironically compare with the
condition of “my city by the lagoon”. But if Ofeimun’s engagement with the question of
exile and the precipitatory role of neo-liberal capitalism pitches Lagos against London,
Ojaide’s When it no Longer Matters where you Live , locates the interconnection between
the attraction of America and its many cities and the implications they hold for the
disorder and chaos of Niger Delta cities. But the case is the same for the rest of the
country’s urbanscapes from Kuru to Abuja where the indices of a failed state have
both epidemic and disastrous economic consequences, as military dictatorship and the
collaboration of other economic and political elite rob the masses of the assurance that
home should offer. The import of all this has reached out in this chapter through the
discourse of subnationalism.
But if it appears that the discourse of subnationalism on When it no Longer Matters
where you Live in this chapter tends to be swallowed up in the general narrative of the
nation it is because:
Modern historiography is inextricably linked with the modern nation...
Truly it has also been disabling, silencing stories both smaller and larger
than the nation... This is why today ... in an era of intense discussion of
multiculturalism and globalism, it may be easier than ever before to